Off Broadway Theatre

The Off Broadway Theater was a hobby, a labor of love, for its owner, John Stegmoyer. He showed new and classic films on weekends and occasional weeknights.

The earliest reference I could find in Lebanon’s Daily News was October 2, 1965, when a band performed at “John’s Off-Broadway Theater” at 114 E. Poplar Street, the address of a house in a residential neighborhood. The first mention of a movie was the 1941 film “The Great American Broadcast” starring Alice Faye, shown March 15, 1968.

A 1979 Daily News article called Stegmoyer the theater’s “owner, operator, projectionist, janitor and candy girl”. The theater and its owner were featured in a two-page article in the February 19, 1979 issue of Boxoffice.

Stegmoyer wrote to a Daily News columnist in 2001, sharing more details. He said he opened in 1962, essentially expanding an earlier 22-seat theater he had operated in his basement since 1955. He closed the 60-seat Off Broadway in 1986, with River Phoenix in “Stand by Me” as the last movie shown.

Google Street View indicates that the “theatre” building is still standing, converted to include a garage door by 2012.

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